no signal on monitor

[Soldiers33]

Hi, got a friend whos computer stopped showing anything on the screen, Is there anyway of figuring whether its the motherboard or graphics card without removing components? I cant fit his card into my pc cause its too big and mine cant go into his cause I have a 8 pin power connector his only has 6.

I had this happen once before and thought it was the gfx card replaced it and it was actually motherboard and dont want to waste money for no reason.

thanks in advance.

[Hum]

Which motherboard ? What video card ?

Is there an on-board graphics chip too ?

And have you tried switching to another monitor cable ?

Is there another video output that you could hook to a TV ?

[Soldiers33]

its different cable, different monitor, since the pc is at my place right now. The card is nvidia gtx 260 i think or 280. Motherboard im not sure to be honest will have to check after work. The graphics card fan spins fine though and no beeps come up or anything, but not sure if he has speaker installed.

[Joseph B]

Take the monitor off his rig, and try it on another machine.

If it works on the other machine, then it is highly likely the video card has died.

[Hum]

You can also try taking out the video card, dusting it off, then reseating it.

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

I would not look at the monitor, or the graphics card or the motherboard first. If the computer switches on but the monitor shows nothing, the first thing you should be looking at changing is the RAM.

[Soldiers33]

tried his comp on my monitor which is definitly working and have cleaned the card still same. Its likely that its the card but it could be the motherboard like another situation that happened with me before. I might try bring both computers together and use the power supply of my pc to power the gfx in his computer? Would that cause any problems for my pc?

Ok thanks for the tip. Will swap his ram with mine just to test it. Hopefully that will get me somewhere further with my investigation.

[MikroMan]

Just make sure your RAM modules and his motherboard are compatible ;)

[Soldiers33]

should be fine we both using ddr2 i believe but dont worry ill double check :)

[azspeedbullet]

does the bios screen show, if so then it could be driver issue

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

does the bios screen show, if so then it could be driver issue

Umm, BIOS does not supply drivers. That's Windows.

[Soldiers33]

Okay just tested it out, unfortunately cant test ram since he had ddr3. But basically just realized that the motherboard has code display and it appears to be fine and just showing as FF, which normaly means everything fine, so I assume it wont be the motherboard or the RAM?